AuthorTopic: [ COMPLETE ] Challenge #32: Pre-'E' (Read 10928 times)

What this is...Less a challenge, more a chance to let your old unfinished works see the light. Post up to three of your favorite unfinished WIPs (for challenges or otherwise) that you never completed! These can be renders or animations. It is marked as "unfinished" if you never submitted it as a final entry for a challenge (it was not voted on), assignment, or posted a final render of it to any gallery, or to finish off your WIP thread.

Restrictions

Anim8or Only: It has to have been at least partly modeled, animated, or rendered in Anim8or.

No touching!: You can't "touch" it before submitting it. No touching up or finishing it, submit it in its inglorious form. The most you are allowed to do is set up an empty scene with lighting to render it, if applicable.

You can use old renders: Don't have the original file? You can use an old render or screenshot instead.

Coated with dust: It has to be more than a month since you last worked on it.

Feel free to share your entries' histories, and the date it was last worked on.

Deadline: August 1st, 2013This challenge will have a public poll. Vote for your favorite entry.

Alright I'll kick it off. As everyone I've got so many ambitious projects that never got past an initial phase, but a few in which something actually got modeled. And over time I've lost a lot of files and at one point actually everything i made in the first 7-8 years of using anim8or. Looking through the forums history I've found some wips that were a cool idea but never got done.

A most recent example was from Arik's Steampunk World project. Although never officially terminated, the last update was made in February of 2011 - only 2,5 years ago.

This is the only one of the three of which i have the project files still lying around. Though the chance that itll get touched again is minimal

A year earlier, in January of 2010, I made my last update on a very ambitious project, the modeling of a detailed steam locomotive. I actually wanted to work more on this at the time, but somehow lost the files and didn't get a chance to turn it into any type of final model. At least a few weeks of modeling went into this though, so maybe it was a good thing I didn't waste more time on it!

The earliest one in the series is from September of 2009. I think this got lost in the same batch as the previous one, as I do remember that I wanted to work more on this but was unable to.

Thanks for the challenge, finally one that's right up my alley: unfinished projects. Although I know someone that is even better at these, so Raxx, a shame you only get to show 3 projects.. will be a tough choice for you!

So funny, $imon. I remember those works. It's a shame the Steampunk World thing never got very far. The detail on your train is still pretty impressive

Now for my own sad story. For the most part, I never get past the modeling stage, probably because it's the most interesting part for me. Other times, I never intend to go past the modeling stage in the first place.

The Dragon

The D-D-D-DRAGON! challenge in Feb. 2010 was the most popular one we had. It lasted only three weeks and we still had 8 entries. Unheard of nowadays Not much to say about my dragon, except that I tuckered out at the wings and legs.

The Old Man

This was made for the Noir challenge. The goal was to have him, a police sheriff or detective, sitting at his desk in a dark room, lit by a desk lamp, with a killer behind him. The only update I posted in July 2011 was before I made the hands and hat (and a gun which I guess got lost), so this image might be a little new to some of you.

The Thing

I seem to like making Things. I made this one sometime in 2005. I don't consider it to be in my top 10 best unfinished works (if I had such a scale), but it was a total surprise when I discovered it in my old emails. So I wanted to post it up. I remember that I was inspired by the monsters in the Berserk manga. I don't know why I emailed it without eyeballs and teeth...I'm fairly certain I modeled them. Yes, he's supposed to have an eyeball in his butt.

Anyway, that's it. Sorry for the large images, didn't feel like making thumbnails

Only two posts in, and I'm already SO RELIEVED to find it's not just me. So many reasons projects don't get finished, and I used to feel so guilty about them all, sat abandoned in some dark forgotten corner, like a box of unwanted kittens locked in the cupboard under the stairs, their piteous mewin- wait, no, hang on. That never happened.

Really fantastic work from both $imon and Raxx there, clearly two of the best Anim8or users anywhere out there. I remember that rooftop of yours really well $imon, not having seen it for a while certainly brings back a sense of awe. And I can fully understand losing a huge chunk of work. I experienced the 'Deskstar click of death' back in 2003/4 and pretty much lost ... well, everything I'd ever drawn, created, composed, made or written all in one fell swoop. You'd think I'd have learned to back things up properly. You'd think.

Raxx, your organic modelling always amazes me, I've never even been able to get started with that sort of thing. Rob Bottin would be proud!

Bringing old unfinished projects to light and no work to do... could well become the most active competition thread yet! Great to see those projects again guys, I remember them well (too well in the case of your monster demon thing Raxx! Nightmarish!). Possibly the hardest part is choosing only three from the graveyard of abandoned projects littering my drives, but here they are:

Steam Zeppelin. This was intended for Arik's steampunk project (which seems to have spawned quite a lot of great stuff!). The airship was always supposed to be under construction, hence one engine missing it's cowling (this engine went on to be animated on its own). The boiler was going to hang below the main frame, behind the gondola, and the frame was going to be partly skinned with some of the interior gas bags in place, etc.

Railway station. Intended for a collaborative railway project on Animanon. The model is based on a typical country Australian railway station and was intended to be exported to Carrara for rendering. This is a new render in Anim8or, the only change was to drop the object into a scene and set the lights.

Astrolabe. This is an old one from v0.95 days intended for an Animanon comp. The position of each planet and major moon is as accurate as possible, with the scale of the objects greatly enlarged of course, though still to scale with each other (up to a point... Mars' moons were necessarily increased in size to make them visible). The whole thing is animated, it's one of the first things I ever motion scripted, and the rotation and orbit of each object is accurate.

This was the main problem and the reason why the animation was never rendered or entered. There is such a massive difference in rotational speed between Jupiter's rotation and the orbits of Mars' moons at one end of the scale, and Pluto's orbit at the other, that it wasn't possible to set a running speed where Pluto could be seen to be moving at all without having the faster moving objects merely blurs. I kinda solved the problem by having the machine accelerate, but I just didn't like the effect. Also, I made everything too big, I had to extend the Z-Far limit to over 50,000 to render the room which introduced some rendering anomalies that I wasn't able to resolve. Ended up walking away from the project with scars, but a little bit wiser.

The 4th image is a close-up of the Saturnian system showing some of the mechanisms involved.

Oh... I feel that we have strong leadership in this competition already Anyway I'm posting my insignificant entry - it's the element I've started working on a month ago - but it went to the direction I didn't want and I thought it would be easier to start from scratch than tweak that one, at last I didn't finished that design at all I've set up for it a quick studio and rendered in ART a stack of two elements. Lightest version has altered contrast and slight colour correction. Cheers!

May as well toss some stuff in here as its not really a challenge is it ? Just reminiscing!

Never did get this Project to bear fruit though I did get to model a Lot Of the items. Last did anything for it September 2011. How time flies, when you are having fun with Anim8or, Blender and Carrara!!

Lost all my steampunk files some time ago during a computer upgrade together with even some of these files ( pre Dropbox days)

Ensoniq5: I remember that Station was inspired to add corner brickwork to my Steampunk factory based on that! Animanon good old days!

Jacobean Mainline Station, Dodgy lighting Here!

Internal view Of station First two items The Jacobean Railway Station were featured in our "Time For Lunch"series ( which reminds me to start looking at Part III sometime)

WH Smith Book and Newspaper Stand Dirtied up and ready To add to Branch line Station

Uk Locomotive Duchess Class (No streamlining but was working on it at the Time)Still Waiting to animatethe Walchearts Valve gear and finish off the Rods etc. Had a tender somewhere for her.

Sorry Raxx, I just didn't realise how many there were! And how rubbish most of them are. It's like trying to choose your three favourite toenail clippings. Ever.

So anyway, here goes. These may not be my best works, fortunately those usually get finished, but I wanted to try and show a bit of variety.

Gladiator

This was meant to be my entry for the 'Sports equipment' comp. This render was produced the day after the competition deadline, and there was something missing from the middle foreground, but sadly I can no longer even remember what that was. It wasn't a person, that's all I'm sure of.

Prawno / Bullet Streams

Virtually the only piece of 'character animation' I've ever even attempted, I made this initially as a joke among some friends. However, it was revisited a few times, the last of which (2006) was to add a 'bullet stream' effect I created earlier that year via a little program I created in Rapid-Q. A longer sample of the bullet stream included for interest.

So this is a collection of 18 world landmarks I created for a game that never got finished (2009). The catch here was I was working as fast as I could. All models were completed within three days, I was using every trick I could think of to get them all done in time. Westminster Palace is just photographs of each angle mapped on to roughly hewn shapes (a la town in Blazzing Saddles), whereas the Cape Town city hall is virtually modelled brick for brick. As I say, not necessarily my best work (and a terrible final render), but I know I learned more in three days than I ever would have any other way, enhanced by the variety of source objects.

Excellent work from everyone else: kreator I notice you're big on the textures too; I'd love to hear what's causing the 'lighting anomaly' in your factory image. I can't get my head around the dark front and the fully-lit balustrade!

I have to correct you on one thing, though: this is definitely a challenge!